vours made by the Roman Pontiffs to bring back the Eastern Church to Catholic unity. In both these councils the whole episcopate, as well as the Byzantine Emperors, acknowledged the divine supremacy of the Roman See, and testified to it by documents, which their relapse into schism has not been able to invalidate. 414

IX. After all the proofs which we have brought forward, it is strange that the leading writers of the High Church in England should deny that the Greek Church ever acknowledged the existence of such a divine authority in Christendom. It is yet more strange to read in the Eirenicon that, "The conditions of reconciliation (imposed on the Eastern Church) were absolute submission to an authority which had grown up since the separation."415 To maintain that the Papal supremacy was wholly unknown to the Greek Church up to the time when Michael Cerularius broke the bonds of union with the West, betrays great ignorance of the history of the Greek empire and Church. Dr. Pusey, in a succeeding passage, professes not to understand how it can be that the Eastern Church "is no part of the Church of Christ, because it does not subject itself to the West, under which God did not place it?"416 But in this sentence the author falls into the fallacy which in logic is called a petitio principii; and assumes as certain two principles, both of which are not only unproved, but false-first, that Christ did not institute in His Church any supremacy in the person of St. Peter and his successors; and secondly, that the Greek

414 Formula Fidei Mich. Imp., in Conc. Lugdun. (Labbe, t. xiv., p. 511). Sacramentum Græcorum (Labbe, 1. c., p. 516). Decretum Unionis, in Conc. Florentino (Labbe, l. c., p. 1183). In the eighth section we shall speak of this important decree.

415 Eirenicon, p. 62.

416 L. C., p. 63.

Church never acknowledged such a supremacy, nor submitted to it. Moreover, in order to judge of the sentiments of the Greeks, even before their schism, we must not look, as Dr. Pusey has done, to the writings of Elias Meniates, Bishop of Zerniza, towards the end of the seventeenth century.417 We agree with the Oxford divine, that at present "the chief controversy between the Greek and the Latin Church, as between Protestants and Catholics, is the supreme power of the Pope;" but we do not hold with him that the dispute about the supreme power of the Pope was the principal cause of the separation of the Greeks from the Catholic Church. The facts and documents produced in the course of this section afford sufficient evidence of our assertion, and free us from the necessity of giving any further proof. But Dr. Pusey goes on to remark, on the authority of the Archimandrite Macarius,418 "That the great Russian empire, converted to the faith by the preaching of monks and missionary bishops since the separation of the East from the West, is a witness to the Greek Church that she is a true member of the one Church." 419 The author evidently misconceives the history of the conversion of the Russian empire, and thus, from an erroneous supposition, draws a consequence which cannot stand modern criticism.420 The true date of the conversion of the Russians to Christianity is undeniably to be placed between the middle of the tenth century and the middle of the eleventh. For although some attempt to convert that nation had been made under the Emperor Basil, in

417 Eirenicon, p. 63.

418 History of Christianity in Russia, p. 394 (in the Eirenicon, p. 62).

419 Eirenicon, 1. c.

420 It is pitiful to find that A. Possevin, in his pamphlet, De Rebus Muscovitis (pt. ii., p. 92), fell into the same mistake. But the criticism of the age of Possevin was not that of the present time.

A.D. 876, and a bishop consecrated at that time by the Patriarch Ignatius had been sent into Russia,421 no very great fruit was gathered from that mission, nor from any of the others which were sent, probably, after the deposition of Ignatius, and which Photius extolled with so much vanity in his famous encyclical.422 The true beginning of the conversion of the Russians is to be found in the year 955, when the Grand Duchess Olga was baptised at Constantinople.423 Her conversion, however, did not immediately incline the bulk of the nation to embrace the faith of Christ; but when her grandson, Wladimir, became a Christian (988), the Russians flocked in great crowds to receive baptism in the Dnieper. From that time Christianity continued to make great progress in Russia, until, under Jaroslav, it became firmly established (1019-1054).424 Now, during the whole of this period, the Greek Church was in full communion with Rome, and in regular subjection to the Apostolic See; the fatal schism did not begin till the year 1054, when the sentence of excommunication was pronounced by the Papal legates against Michael Ceru

421 Constantinus Porphyrogenitus: In Vita Basilii (Theophanes Contin., n. 97. Edit. Bonnæ, p. 343, seq.) Cedrenus: Hist., t. ii., p. 242. Edit. Bonnæ.

422 The learned Asseman not only proved the falsehood of what Photius wrote in that encyclical about the conversion of Russia, but also asserted that the whole of that encyclical was concocted by Photius after the year 869, as if he had written and published it long before his exile.-See Kalendarium Ecclesiæ Univ., t. ii., pt. ii., c. i., sec. xiv., p. 253, seq. Romæ, 1755.

423 Const. Porphyrog.: De Caeremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ, l. ii., c. xv., p. 594. Edit. Bonnæ. See also-Stilting: De Conversione et Fide Russorum, sec. ii. (Acta SS., t. ii., Septembris, p. v., seq.). F. Gagarin: Origines Catholiques de l'Eglise Russe, sec. iii. (Etudes Théolog. Hist., t. ii., 1857, p. 161, seq.).

424 See the documents in Op. cit. of Stilting, 1. c., secs. iii., iv. (Acta SS., t. c., p. vi., seq.). Gagarin: 1. c., secs. iv., v. (l. c., p. 174, seq.).

larius. 425 But we do not intend to dwell on this subject, the difficulties of which have already received satisfactory explanation ;426 we are content to refer the reader to the learned works of Count de Maistre,427 Aug. Galitzin,428 F. J. Gagarin,429 P. C. Tondini,430 &c. These writers contain a valuable collection of extracts from the original ancient liturgical books of the Russian Church. The divine supremacy of the Pope will be found to be stated with so much clearness and emphasis as to make it impossible to maintain that those documents were framed by a church which had not from its cradle been under the influence of Rome.

425 Stilting: Op. cit., secs. v., vi. (l. c., p. xii., seq.). Gagarin : 1. c., secs. vi., vii. (l. c., p. 210, seq.).

1

426 Besides the two above-mentioned works of Stilting and Gagarin, see also-Vizzardelli : Dissertatio de Origine Christianæ Religionis in Russia. Romæ, 1826. Blätter, in his Political Hist., t. iv., ix. Theiner: De la Situation de l'Eglise Catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie, &c.

427 Du Pape, 1. i., c. x.

428 Un Missionaire Russe en Amerique. Append. Paris, 1856. 429 Les Starovères, or l'Eglise Russe, et le Pape, sec. vi. (Etudes cit., t. ii., 1857, p. 64, seq.).

430 La Primauté de Saint Pierre prouvée par les titres que lui donne l'Eglise Russe dans sa Liturgie. Paris, 1867.

SECTION VI.

FALSE DECRETALS-AFRICAN CONTROVERSY-CANONS OF SARDICA ON APPEALS CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE SUPREMACY OF THE POPE.

I. WHAT we have seen of the relations between the Eastern Church and the Apostolic See, would not have prepared us for the assertion so frequently made that the present state of isolation of the Eastern, as well as of the, English Church, is owing to the forgery of the False Decretals. Yet Dr. Pusey attributes to these that practical system of authority which, he thinks, completely changed the position the Roman Church occupied in the fourth and fifth centuries.481 The documents produced in the two foregoing sections are more than sufficient to show that the Decretals had nothing to do with the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff, which the Latin and the Greek Church alike had ever acknowledged. Neither Emperors nor Patriarchs would have submitted to it, had they not been persuaded of its divine origin. The East most certainly had no knowledge of the False Decretals; nor was any appeal made to them by the Popes when exercising a supreme jurisdiction over the Eastern Patriarchates. That jurisdiction had been exercised by the Popes, both in the East and in the West, long before the appearance of the so-called Isidorian Collection in the ninth century, and those who maintain the contrary should produce proof that for nine centuries the Pope was no more than primus inter pares, and regarded as such both by East and West.

431 Eirenicon, p. 236, seq.